All the mind games of earth orbit has got me thinking how the moonrocks fit into the whole logic, antecedant, consequent and other crazy-cool Jayish stuff.

The moonrocks are a consequent. But of what antecedant? Possibly a manned mission. Possibly an unmanned mission. Possibly a gift from magical fairy beings. To select one as immediately validated alone would be affirming the consequent (never mind the fact that only one of the hypotheses is actually viable and anyway, there could be others) but if we could find direct evidence of one of these antecedants. Obviously, we have direct evidence of the manned mission hypothesis more than any other competing hypothesis, so the manned mission hypothesis is favoured as the theory.

But does this make use of the moonrocks as evidence of Apollo's authenticity? Well, we have the huge body of evidence including photos and other crazy-cool things and from this, given the air to ground transcripts revealing the astronauts collected samples and LM and CM performed as though they were carrying samples, and there are photos of samples being collected, we can predict that we would have on Earth, believe it or not, samples, vis a vis moonrocks. So in this way, moonrocks are corroboratory evidence of the Apollo story.

Have I just stated the same thing twice or have I gone round in circles?

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Freedom For Fission A breath of fresh Iodine-131

The moon rocks also show signs of careful selection, which is an indicator of a manned mission. It would have been a lot harder for an unmanned, remote-controlled rover to identify and collect the "Genesis Rock," for example.

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Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.

...or core samples.

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"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

Yeah, but were both my perspectives essentially the same one or were they using one to prove the other to prove the first?

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Freedom For Fission A breath of fresh Iodine-131

I think what I'm try to wonder is are the two lines of reasoning compatible?

The problem I see with making both lines of reasoning together is that each case uses evidence in a different role. This is all about proving beyond reasonable doubt the Apollo story. There are two bits of evidence I bring up for this task: the moonrocks, and all the ten libraries worth of other stuff.

In the first case, I start with moonrocks as the initial observation, and use the other stuff as the test of the Apollo story hypothesis. In the second case, I start with the other stuff as the initial observation, and use moonrocks to as the test of the Apollo story hypothesis. That sounds kind of circular.

I'd imagine the second case would be more useful in the arguments with earth orbit.

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Freedom For Fission A breath of fresh Iodine-131

Are there any closeup photographs of specific rocks that can be positively ID'd as real, existing rocks in a lab or on display somewhere? That would be a fairly compelling argument -- how could NASA produce a fake photograph of a specific rock, without a-priori knowledge of its exact physical characteristics?

Nah, they got the rocks first and then set up the Area 51 backlot using the rocks or copies thereof.

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Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.

A fair number, actually - the term during the missions was "documented samples". That way, one could know doing analysis whether one was dealing with the side that had recently been exposed to sunliht or buried in the regolith. Looking through the Apollo Lunar Surface journal, an example is seen in images AS17-146-22366/7 (a "before" stereo pair of a boulder) and -22368, an "after" shot once Gene Cernan had knocked a sample piece off of it. Another sample starts in picture -22413. The ALSJ ties sample numbers to these images as well.

I don't see a problem here. The complete body of evidence proves the Apollo missions. How you formulate your hypothesis and subsequently go about testing it depends on which piece of the evidence you observe first. The first observation could be the moon rocks or, say, the photographs. In either case the other evidence proves the first. The problem is there's only a finite amount of evidence, thus at some point you must make an inductive leap.

Let's say I'm seen driving a new car. From this you hypothesize that I bought it. You look for other evidence and discover a bill of sale, title and cancelled check that all confirm your hypothesis. For simplicity sake, let's say that's all the evidence. Now someone else comes along and happens to find the bill of sale. From this they hypothesize I bought a new car. They then discover a title, cancelled check, and the car itself, which all confirms the hypothesis. In this example the second proof is not invalid just because you already used the car as your initial observation. It is the four pieces of evidence combined that forms a strong enough case to make the inductive leap that I bought a new car.

I don't think there is anything circular here. We just have an example of approaching the same problem from two different directions.